Update on the topic of spam - I asked the admin of the forum to give me moderator privileges so that I can clean it up when I see it. Thankfully, he did so! After I asked what to do with such spam links, he said: "my go-to is just editing any external links into links to the forum (smbc-comics.com/smbcforum/) while leaving the rest of the message intact; forum culture here is more about neutering and harnessing spammers than eliminating them." So I've been doing exactly that.
Report any spam post you see on this subforum and I'll probably deal with it within a day or two - reported posts are very highlighted for me now. I'll probably deal with it even if you don't report it though, this forum isn't that active and I don't miss any post

I will also start adding links to the particular comics when the original poster of a thread fails to do so. If you think that's abuse of power, then you're wrong and you will do as I say!